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Boiled Artichokes
Cut off stem close to leaves, remove outside bottom leaves, trim artichoke, cut off one inch from top of leaves, and with a sharp knife remove choke; then tie artichoke with a string to keep its shape. Soak one-half hour in cold water. Drain, and cook thirty to forty-five minutes in boiling, salted, acidulated water. Remove from water, place upside down to drain, then take off string. Serve with Bechamel or Hollandaise Sauce. Boiled Artichokes often constitute a course at dinner. Leaves are drawn out separately with fingers, dipped in sauce, and fleshy ends only eaten, although the bottom is edible. Artichokes may be cut in quarters, cooked, drained, and served with Sauce Bearnaise. When prepared in this way they are served with mutton.
The method is sound and needs almost no updating; what it assumes is that you already know how an artichoke behaves. The notes below fill in the numbers Farmer left out.
- Acidulated waterThis means water with acid added — about a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar per quart. It keeps the cut surfaces from browning and the cooked flesh pale rather than grey.
- Removing the choke firstDigging the fuzzy choke out of a raw globe through the top is awkward work. Many cooks now boil the artichoke whole and scrape the choke out with a spoon once it is tender and the leaves have loosened, which takes seconds.
- Trimming and the stringSnapping off the tough outer leaves and cutting an inch from the top is still the right approach. The string is optional insurance for a large globe that wants to splay open; a plate or small lid set on top in the pot does the same job and also keeps them submerged.
- Judging donenessThirty to forty-five minutes suits a large globe artichoke; medium ones are often done in 25 to 30. Test by pulling an inner leaf — it should come away with only slight resistance, and a knife should slide into the base easily.
- Choice of panCook in stainless steel or enamel. Bare aluminum and cast iron react with artichokes and the acid in the water, dulling both the vegetable and the pot.
- Yield and serviceOne globe per person as the separate course Farmer describes. Allow about a third of a cup of sauce each, and put out a bowl for the spent leaves. Whole boiled artichokes are just as good warm or at room temperature as hot.
- The quartered versionQuartered artichokes cook faster — figure 15 to 20 minutes — and the choke should come out before they go into the pot, since it is easy to reach once the globe is cut open.
The globe artichoke is the immature flower bud of a thistle, domesticated in the Mediterranean and generally traced through Italy and southern France before reaching American gardens; commercial growing in the United States is often said to have centered on the California coast around Half Moon Bay and later Castroville, planted largely by Italian immigrant farmers, though this came after the book's period. In Fannie Farmer's Boston of the 1890s the artichoke was still a somewhat genteel, imported-feeling vegetable, and she takes the trouble to explain how to eat one — leaf by leaf, with the fingers, in a period otherwise strict about cutlery — and notes that boiled artichokes often constitute a course in themselves. The pairing with mutton and Béarnaise, and the Béchamel and Hollandaise alternatives, place the dish squarely in the French service that American cooking schools were then teaching as the standard for a formal dinner.